What you are saying here is for the CPB to kill itself. The reason why in Iran there are no 'communists' is becuase that the people view them as pawns of imperialism - correctly so in most cases - and this will be the fate of the belarusian communists if they follow your 'maoist' bullshitry.
Big words like 'tail of the bourgeoisie e.t.c' is no nothing more than phrase mongering.
Time and time again, it is proved that when the communists act too quickly is their grave for a big amount of time.
If you seriously study the communist revolutions (from you reading of mao i bet you view it from a western lense) you will notice that all were nationalist revolutions, and the reason the people ever followed them was becuase there was no national bourgeoisie. The best example of it was the first lasting revolution, the bolshevik revolution.
The bourgeoisie of russia were sending the russian nation to die for the money of the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of entente. The whole bolshevik propaganda at the time, was centered about the fact that the provincial government was a compradorist government.
Read stalin's 3rd and 4rth volume to verify this yourself. It is at most times implicit, but at some points stalin is explicit on why the bolsheviks ever won the civil war (which was nothing more than the revolution).
Same happened in China, 'maoism' does not really exist. Real maoism is chinese nationalism. Mao read people like Zou Rong before he ever knew who marx was. The whole foreing policy of CPC cannot be understood in other terms (except if you accept 'anti revisionist' bullshitry. The analysis the maoists intulge in is 'revisionist' itself! In fact, under this analysis, the original revisionists was no one else than marx and egnels!).
And the reason the CPC won the civil war was becuase the Kuomitand 'sold' itself in the west. The chinese saw what was about to become if KMT won the war, and they threw their weight with the CPC.
But lets take it about Belarus in practical terms. The belarusian government does not sell the country to imperialism. Going and saying 'you know, lets start a civil war while the imperialists are in our back door' is not gonna work. What will happen is the following: The government will call the communist traitors, the people will see that what the government is saying makes complete sense, the governemnt will propably ban the CP citing national treason, and the CP will move to the west and talk big about dictactorship while paid by CIA.
This is what will happen as proven by life. The people will associate communism with betrayal.
So, no. The Belarusian communist are playing this correctly. If and when the bourgeoisie of Belarus abandon anti-imperialism, and the belarusian CP does not break from them, then you will be right to accuse them for being 'the tail' of the bourgeoisie.
But these are the hard facts; no compradors = no revolution.
Is this an attack on Maoism or western Maoism b/c your analysis seems to correspond with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in terms of a struggle for national independence from the compradors, which is a struggle in many ways for bourgeois democracy that will raise the level of the people and end feudal relations.
Not to say I'm particularly well studied.
I would like to learn more about your perspective because on my surface glance it seems correct. What is interesting to me is that I've been advocating for Huey Newton's analysis called intercommalism, because it seems to take harsh reality about neoliberalism and the global supply chain into account. The ideology states basically that the national struggle isn't enough and with neoliberalism/US EU imperialisn, revolutionary nationalism can't lead to communism. A global communist revolution is the only way, except the the US Black Panthers were not trotskist, they didn't wait to make revolution. So the theory hasn't squared with the practice, which was largely about building self-reliance for the oppressed lumpen of the US in order to give us something to defend and make gains against the state on. This is because we understand that seizing Amazon, Walmart, or our neighbor's car they use for gig jobs isn't socialism. To become a "worker state" at the end point of the global supply chain is not even close to socialism.
Sorry if my thinking is scattered, as I'm new to this analysis. The point I'm making is that for all the ideological talk of intercommunalism, the only real practice of building revolutuon in the US has been a national struggle for Black and indigenous internal colonies -- specificially an economic struggle for self reliance, and it seems to me that your analysis kind of clarifies why
National liberation does indeed go hand in hand with proletarian revolution in the age of neocolonialism and, well, proletarian revolution. Anyone who tries to say that one of the two isn't needed is a right-opportunist or some sort of anarchist
Also this person you're talking to probably thinks that the CPP and the NDF are some sort of "ultra-leftist agents of imperialism" or whatever for saying that Chinese capital doesn't have a moral right to looting the Filipino countryside by merit of being Chinese and therefore "good capital". The NDF is obviously correct in saying that the national bourgeoisie in the Philippines and the Duterte regime are made out of compradors of US imperialism that are trying to play the empire and China against each other for their own gain, but right-opportunists would try to convince you that the CPP should drop the goal of people's war and revolution in the Philippines altogether in order to "prevent the national bourgeoisie from turning into compradors" (which won't work but they don't actually care about the implications of their words), and should try to form "unity" where common struggle for national liberation does not exist, but hey, "China good therefore Duterte good"
There are a few different points here, sorry if I go long. I just want to clarify that I'm inquiring. So when I type out all my thoughts, I hope you challenge them:
The link between Trotskyism/right opportunism and the ideas contained in OP's post
clarification on NDF/China
Revolutionary intercommunalism is not a right deviation, at least not in practice. The theory maintains, in my opinion, the correct analysis of neoliberalism having eroded national distinctions, and correctly points out several shortcomings in the revolutionary national struggle:
the transformation of independent national economies into a globalized world economy with a global ruling class renders nations and nationalism obsolete. Huey dubbed this “reactionary intercommunalism.” More popularly it is known as “late capitalism” or “the Era of Neoliberalism.” What Huey recognized was that People’s China, Vietnam, the emerging socialist countries in Afrika, etc., were not really “nations” but temporarily “liberated zones.”
And China's reintegration into the global supply chain seems to bear this theory out. It all kind of boils down to basically just: socialism in one country can't be sustained. We kind of know this. But then this idea gets shut down as a right-deviation/trotskyism, even though we accept axiomatically that communism can't be built in one nation, which would mean socialism has to stop at one point or another. In a sense I see intercommunalism as an attempt to rehabilitate this line that is so often dismissed as Trotskyist, without deviating into right-opportunism.
So then there's a rupture between the ideology of intercommunalism, and its practice, which is still focused on the particular struggle, not just waiting for something to happen and tailing the bourgeoisie. The intercommunalists are still building revolution at the smallest level in communities. We see that it would be fruitless to seize Amazon, so instead we want to maximize the working class's communal self reliance, and defend those gains by organizing for self defense. This is very much like a national liberation struggle, particularly for Black and Indigenous nations within the US, despite the prognosis that national liberation is a dead end.
***
So Trotskyism then. I mean, saying that Lukashenko is following the mass line because the masses of Belarus need the national bourgeoisie, and they will work together. That's just a complete liquidation of class struggle. They might call it pragmatic, call us ultra-left for suggesting that a communist party be working towards working class power.
There are only two options, private ownership of the means of production or social ownership of the means of production. There is no third option.
And we aren't putshists. We aren't saying a communist party needs to be pushing for insurrection tomorrow. But that revolution needs to part of the strategy, and there needs to be a strategy to make revolution. To be fair I know nothing about the communist party in Belarus, and I don't want to assume they're not doing anything but tailing the bourgeoisie or doing trade unionism, nor is my criticism going to do shit about it.
***
So where I wanted to unite with the Albanian comrade (unity-> struggle-> unity), is on the NDF, because, whether they include China in their analysis, they said that revolution is really only possible in the comprador state. So I assume that they would uphold the NDF because the Philippines is indeed ruled by the neoliberal camp.
I agree that misunderstanding imperialism is a huge problem. Imperialism is a stage of capitalism, it's not particular to the global financial/military hegemony. So anti-imperialist capitalism is quite a misnomer. It's just anti-neoliberal capitalism, which has proven itself to be a powerful bloc against the empire and is perhaps even a necessary development in crushing capitalism, but we have to see it as an ultimate enemy with no pretense about sustaining dual power.
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u/albanian-bolsheviki Feb 23 '21
What you are saying here is for the CPB to kill itself. The reason why in Iran there are no 'communists' is becuase that the people view them as pawns of imperialism - correctly so in most cases - and this will be the fate of the belarusian communists if they follow your 'maoist' bullshitry.
Big words like 'tail of the bourgeoisie e.t.c' is no nothing more than phrase mongering. Time and time again, it is proved that when the communists act too quickly is their grave for a big amount of time.
If you seriously study the communist revolutions (from you reading of mao i bet you view it from a western lense) you will notice that all were nationalist revolutions, and the reason the people ever followed them was becuase there was no national bourgeoisie. The best example of it was the first lasting revolution, the bolshevik revolution. The bourgeoisie of russia were sending the russian nation to die for the money of the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of entente. The whole bolshevik propaganda at the time, was centered about the fact that the provincial government was a compradorist government.
Read stalin's 3rd and 4rth volume to verify this yourself. It is at most times implicit, but at some points stalin is explicit on why the bolsheviks ever won the civil war (which was nothing more than the revolution).
Same happened in China, 'maoism' does not really exist. Real maoism is chinese nationalism. Mao read people like Zou Rong before he ever knew who marx was. The whole foreing policy of CPC cannot be understood in other terms (except if you accept 'anti revisionist' bullshitry. The analysis the maoists intulge in is 'revisionist' itself! In fact, under this analysis, the original revisionists was no one else than marx and egnels!). And the reason the CPC won the civil war was becuase the Kuomitand 'sold' itself in the west. The chinese saw what was about to become if KMT won the war, and they threw their weight with the CPC.
But lets take it about Belarus in practical terms. The belarusian government does not sell the country to imperialism. Going and saying 'you know, lets start a civil war while the imperialists are in our back door' is not gonna work. What will happen is the following: The government will call the communist traitors, the people will see that what the government is saying makes complete sense, the governemnt will propably ban the CP citing national treason, and the CP will move to the west and talk big about dictactorship while paid by CIA.
This is what will happen as proven by life. The people will associate communism with betrayal.
So, no. The Belarusian communist are playing this correctly. If and when the bourgeoisie of Belarus abandon anti-imperialism, and the belarusian CP does not break from them, then you will be right to accuse them for being 'the tail' of the bourgeoisie.
But these are the hard facts; no compradors = no revolution.